


happiness is an extremely uneventful subject

by strangesmallbard



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangesmallbard/pseuds/strangesmallbard
Summary: The Doctor gives Yaz her journal to read.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 19
Kudos: 41





	happiness is an extremely uneventful subject

**Author's Note:**

> hello! hope everyone's staying safe! i am once again coping through fanfiction. this oneshot takes place in my version of s13 that has slowburn thasmin alongside the alien adventures. 
> 
> many, many thanks to rayna who put up with me dming several versions of the same paragraph at 1am last night!
> 
> title is from "no choir" by the florence and the machine

Once upon a time. Such funny words, really. So many planets across so many universes (universi?) carry those words like a snack in their pockets. Gather around, I have a story for you. This way, something will last forever.

Oh, the Doctor loved being a story! Can’t disappoint when you’re just the soft brush of words against a forehead. A bright blue miracle-splotch against the rainiest of days.

If miracles existed anyway. Too close to coincidences, semantically. If the Doctor believed in either she’d never get up in the morning. If she ever slept on the regular. Lots of _ifs_ to consider.

Stories can hurt, of course. But they’re only the practice round for the real thing, the hurt. The great mass of nothing that narrative can’t parcel into words. Human beings, all of their stories are about losing something. Even when they think they’re talking about happiness.

All of them.

But the Doctor can handle that, certainly. Being a grief-stained footnote in some human mythos. Always burning, always bright, always grinning against the very last page.

She bites the fingernail on her thumb.

Tucked into the library couch, Yasmin Khan flips through a little blue journal. Its yellow pages crackle like a throat being cleared.

The Doctor watches from behind, pacing something awful. Boot-steps echoing. How long does it take humans to read? She always forgets. Linear time, the greatest mystery.

Yaz’s brow. 

It does this funny crease in the middle of her forehead when she reads. Funny how the Doctor can watch that for the rest of eternity, probably.

 _“The orange skies of Gallifrey,”_ Yaz reads, deliberate despite the murmur. _“If only I could sit on that yellow grass once more. If only the person sitting next to me wouldn’t live on to watch it burn. Oh River, you’d love it.”_

The Doctor tugs at a brace. “Bit of a drama queen, he were.” She puts on a scoff. “You can get better views at Space Florida. I’ll take you tomorrow if you’d like. They do great piña coladas.” 

Yaz watches, same crease. The library glows in her hair and the Doctor’s hearts do a tumble. Not because of the hair, it’s the—

“Thought you said he was the grumpy one.”

“He was.” The Doctor frowns, pausing her pacing. “Then he wasn’t anymore.”

Yaz taps an index finger on the blue cover. She watches and the Doctor cowers, somewhere no one can see. “Because of Bill?”

In the beginning—well, towards the middle. In between two neural balancers—The Doctor thought Yaz saw the Big Bang when she looked at her and asked all the right questions. Nowadays, she really knows better. Yaz sees the hair the Doctor can’t quite keep tucked behind her ears, engine oil grease under the swerve of her palm.

The Big Bang doesn’t have to worry about those big, human eyes. 

The Big Bang is a specific epoch in space-time, and the Doctor wants—

“You’d like Bill,” the Doctor says, shoving herself forward with her hands in her pockets. She perches on top of the couch’s backrest, swings her legs over. “Although it never goes well for me when my friends like each other.” She winces. “That came out _totally_ wrong. I prefer my friends to like each other. One big happy…”

Yaz reads her, cover to cover, in the splittest of seconds. She tugs the Doctor’s hand until she’s pulled over the cushions and in, tucked into Yaz’s side like she was born to fit.

Maybe she was.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Their hands wind up half-slotted together on the cover, the Doctor’s chin nestled on Yaz’s shoulder. She feels the hum of their pulses matching and unmatching; two buzzing moths trying to find purchase on the same lamp. No, hang on. Insects aren’t very romantic. On Earth, anyway. Scratch that one.

Soon this’ll be too much for her, she knows this body now. She’ll lean back and thumb Yaz’s braid and that’ll be enough, but for now she lets the moment take its swell of oxygen. She can hold her breath for a _really_ long time. Just ask a certain lake in Bilehurst Cragg.

Yaz, back to reading, lands fingertips on the Doctor’s neck, near her jaw. The Doctor closes her eyes and sees the Big Bang anyway. 

“Your handwriting changes.” Inhale, a round laugh. _“California is very fast, very wet, and very bright. Amy won’t stop talking about it.”_

The Doctor peers down and the name slaps cold water against her neck. It’s her eleventh incarnation—of the ones she actually remembers in any case—who indeed favored a scratchier scrawl. Amy won’t stop talking about it. Amy is _happy_ , you stupid, stupid man.

Yaz looks over her shoulder. “Doctor?”

She catches a particular worry curling on Yaz’s lips. She knows those lips. “Was in a very mardy mood that day,” she starts, hoping those words jog a smile out of her. They do, briefly. “Lost my fave bow tie while tubing.”

She points to the page’s corner where her eleventh self drew a terrible rendition of said bow tie (it had little whales on it) and a very scratchy frown-y face. Really no patience for drawing, that one. As if she can talk.

Yaz nudges her shoulder. “Serious business, a good bow tie.” Her eyes graze the Doctor’s neck. “You do carry them well.”

Now, the Doctor is many things, some terrible, others great, but she is not above preening. 

Hand still within holding reach, Yaz carefully flips the pages back a few entries to a faded drawing of a young girl sitting on a suitcase. Hearts lurch. “ _Amelia Pond._ ” Yaz tests the name’s weight a few times. “I can see why she went by Amy.”

The Doctor had offered names like a hand of cards. Pick one to start, but only one, and not the full deck. Not yet. It won’t ever be a full deck anyway, as long as Yaz isn’t in the shuffle. 

As long as Yaz isn’t—

 _“Went to see Bill’s mother, to get those photographs. They have the same high-pitched laugh. Our lives are very unfair, aren’t they. We can visit and then visit again and never tell anyone the truth..._ ” Trailing off, Yaz stares at the words. “Bill traveled with you after Amy, right?”

The Doctor nods against her shoulder. “Way after. And after _that_ after too.”

“Cheeky,” Yaz offers, engrossed.

She reads on, and the Doctor leans back on the couch to watch. The library’s lanterns glow everywhere in Yaz, or maybe that’s just Yaz all the time. Yaz in a pink corridor, pleading to do _more_ like humans aren’t the bright flicker of a torch that can only go out, and that’s why the Doctor loves them so much, doesn’t she? All that _doing_ more. The spark in the dark. Doctor, what have you done this time. You can’t go back from this—

Oh she’s _stupid._ She’s so completely stupid!

“Thank you, by the way,” Yaz says. “For showing this to me.”

The Doctor blinks. She blinks again. Conceal, don’t feel. Don’t let her know—

Hold on. That’s _Frozen_.

Yaz watches, not wary, not careful—none of those adjectives describe Yasmin Khan even close to well—but. She’s waiting, certainly. Her hand lingers near the Doctor’s calf and she looks so kind. Too kind for the Doctor to trail runaway trains.

“It’s not much,” oh wrong thing, wrong wrong. “I mean, it’s pretty boring compared to the stuff it’s about. River always said I weren’t much of a wordsmith.” She swings her arms in front of her and stretches.

Yaz smiles. Oh, she smiles. “Nothing you share about yourself could ever bore me.”

Oh.

That.

Ah—

She shifts closer, hands askew. “There’s a page about Silurian aerodynamics in there, if you were looking for a bit of a snoozer instead.”

Yaz stares, considering. “I mean it, Doctor.”

The Doctor takes her hand. She’s warm and real. It’s terrifying. “I know you do. You’re Yasmin Khan, not a not-meaning-it bone in your whole body.”

Seconds of deliberation pass and Yaz closes the book. The pages whine shut. “I love you,” she says simply.

The Doctor’s brain properly short-circuits. Impressive. “You told me that.” Pause, reload. “We had chips.”

Cheeky smile on, Yaz’s hand comes up to rest on a brace. The Doctor wants her closer. Spark in the dark. “Best chips in the universe, yeah.” She traces up the bracer, finally coming to rest fingertips back on the Doctor’s jaw. “It lets me know you weren’t alone, you know. That’s a gift.”

A gift.

Head swimming in a clear pond, the Doctor leans over and kisses her. She hears the book slide onto the little table, feels warm hands find her waist, scrunch into her shirt. Yaz’s grip turns solid in all the best of ways.

The Doctor is a story with an iron-hot clamor for an ending. Not good or bad, just too fast. Always too fast. It’s enough to make a head spin—like the kissing, for instance—all that glorious ending and the Doctor is still real when the story is over. 

That’s the real ending, when there’s only the nothing. Hand on Yaz’s soft cheek, she braces herself against a score of empty pages, she waits for her hearts to—

“So stop hiding in there,” Yaz says, nose nestled against hers. “I’m not afraid.”

“I know.” Breath in, breath out. Always been bad at meditating. She watches Yaz’s brow, thinks of her hand on the Doctor’s thready pulse on her burning planet. “Yaz, I…”

The words drop fast in the air. Like a lead weight.

Yaz pulls back, not too far. “Yeah?”

Little Amy, still out there somewhen, waiting alone in the dark. Bill, whose borrowed books from this very library are sat on a desk in her empty room. Donna. Donna. _Donna._ The sentence ends there, don’t it? She owes her that much. River in another library entirely. Rose—

Rose. 

She kisses her cheek, lingering. “Existentially speaking, a bit of fear is good. Healthy, even. I’ve been….I’ve had my brushes, but I’m good right here. With you.” Pause. “Not sure if I made that clear enough.” Pause. “Not sure if any of that was clear, actually.”

Yaz smiles, tilting her head as she tucks a strand of the Doctor’s hair back. That smile, it grows from something shadowed, don’t it? Something the Doctor still needs to ask properly about. That’s the thing about the real thing, real people. About the way real people are when the story isn’t looking. That library glow, low and bright and sure. Yeah, that’s her. It’s all her. 

“Yeah,” Yaz says. “Crystal.” She glances at the journal. The bluest of blues. The yellow pages. A pocketful of many forevers. “Would you read me something?”

Hearts lurch. This time, in a good way. “What do you want to hear?”

“You pick. I sort of just want to hear you talk.” 

The journal passes hands and the Doctor finds a dozen friendly names with her pointer finger. She can still see River pointing in her own book, mapping their adventures, finding the little crossovers. No miracles. Ah, there it is. Bill Potts, TARDIS alerts, the—

“—Planet of killer emojis.”

Yaz settles a head on her shoulder. “Killer emojis? Like _emojis.”_

“Like the ones you and Ryan overuse, exactly.”

“Oi, every other text from you is an emoji.”

“Really? Must be something up with the translation circuit.”

Yaz settles in. “Hmm. Alright. Tell me about them.”

Deep breath.

“Once upon a time—“

“You’re adding on.”

“Embellishing.” She gives a big grin, feeling it up in her cheekbones. “All for your benefit.”

“How very considerate.” Yaz’s smile brushes the Doctor’s neck. 

Deep breath, Doctor. Hold on. Settle in. Chapters to go.

“ _We arrived just in time. The robots nearly killed everyone. You say the TARDIS knows best, but this was by the skin of our—“_


End file.
